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The Mote in God's Eye

The Mote In God's Eye is their acknowledged masterpiece, an epic novel of mankind's first encounter with alien life that transcends the genre. No lesser an authority than Robert A. Heinlein called it "possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read".

Nice Dragons Finish Last: Heartstrikers, Book 1

Audie Award, Fantasy, 2016. As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: keep quiet, don't cause trouble, and stay out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn't fly in a family of ambitious magical predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience.

Cheekyreviews says:"Amazing story!!"

Publisher's Summary

Noren knew that his world was not as it should be - it was wrong that only the Scholars, and their representatives the Technicians, could use metal tools and Machines. It was wrong that only they had access to the mysterious City, which he had always longed to enter. Above all, it was wrong for the Scholars to have sole power over the distribution of knowledge. The High Law imposed these restrictions and many others, though the Prophecy promised that someday knowledge and Machines would be available to everyone. Noren was a heretic. He defied the High Law and had no faith in the Prophecy's fulfillment. But was defiance enough, or could some way be found to make it come true?

This award-winning science fiction novel is the first book of the Children of the Star trilogy, but is complete in itself and is of more interest to younger listeners than the two following books, although adults also enjoy it. It appeared in the UK under the title Heritage of the Star.

I bought into the whole Amazon / Audible ecosystem (Kindles, Kindle Fires, Amazon Prime, Audible Gold, etc.), and am trapped now. But I gotta say that this corporate behemoth is not doing its customers or its own reputation any good with its emphasis on quantity with a disregard to quality. On the Kindle side it's almost impossible to avoid self-published authors who desperately needed the services of a copyeditor (or better yet, an editor...or even a slush-pile reader who might have saved the public from the experience of the manuscript) or unproofread scans of texts (unintelligible because of loss of periods and conversions of the letter h to b, etc). Now it seems that even audiobooks are not safe.

The narrator has a pleasant enough voice. The problem is in his agonizing slow pacing (was this recording originally intended for challenged young readers and/or English language learners?), lack of appropriate inflection, and tendency to let his "character voices" used in dialog (such as they are; not a lot of vocal flexibility here) spill into the first few words of non-dialog text.

_This Star Shall Abide_ was one of my favorite books as a young teen in the 1970s, and I was looking forward to hearing it performed. However, even though it was a mere $1.99 plus tax, I'm returning this Audible book on principle.